GenSurf Revision History

Current version: 1.9 is available here.

1.9    3/20/2000

• Fixed support for curved surfaces with the Q3Radiant plugin version. This version requires Q3Radiant 197 or later to work properly.
• Changed the caption buttons a bit: context-sensitive help button is no longer present, and has been replaced with a minimize button. Context-sensitive help is still available by right-clicking on a control or by pressing F1 when the control in question has the input focus.

1.8.3   1/26/2000

• Ack! again. Now this is just plain embarrassing. It won't make a difference to Q3 mappers, because the detail hint brushes produced by GenSurf aren't needed and weren't used anyway, but fooling around with the interface a bit I inadvertently removed that feature for all games. Thanks to the gimp for catching this one.

1.8.2   1/26/2000

• Ack! Old link on the About box was replaced with the correct link. Also added link to the Tarot discussion board, where you can visit and let me know how much you admire my excellent work, or alternatively how GenSurf so completely sucks and fouls up your entire day :-)

1.8.1   1/22/2000

Man... you guys are good! I'm getting bug reports before I announce I have an update :-). Two from id's Paul Jaquay's:

• If the Preview window in the plugin was minimized and you then returned to Q3Radiant, the next time you launched GenSurf the preview window would have the size of a minimized window but not be minimized, and the View Angles window was a goner. Fixed it.
• Not really a bug but a feature that's been improved. I wasn't happy with how long GenSurf was taking to read texture names from pak0.pk3, so I removed that capability in the plugin and displayed only the textures that were currently loaded in the editor. This was too limiting. The current version reads texture names from the selected pak file, and writes those texture names to a text file. So the first time you run GenSurf it will take a while to parse the pak, but subsequent runs will be much faster (until you select another pk3 file).

1.8     1/18/2000

• Added support for Quake III Arena, including curved surfaces. Before you haul off and spend too much time building elaborate surfaces with curves, please read about the potential problems you'll face here.
• Added a feature to produce a surface described by an arbitrary equation. This feature requires the presence of Microsoft Excel 5.0 or later.
• Relaxed the constraints on the number of divisions a bit... you can now produce a 64x64 grid (previous limit was 32x32). NOTE: This feature was added at the request of several users who know what they are doing, namely making a map that will take several days to compile and have huge polygon counts before they add their vis-blocking architecture. I will hunt down and shoot the first person that e-mails me complaining of bad r_speeds with a 64x64 grid... well... I'll think about it anyway :-)
• Changed the plugin interface quite a bit. Namely: 1) Disabled redundant controls that would otherwise conflict with choices made in the editor. 2) Removed the ability to get texture names from pak/wad files. The plugin will now display the list of textures currently loaded in the editor. The default texture will be the texture used on a selected brush at the time the plugin is launched. This is a big time-saver, particularly with Q3. 3) Now places brushes in a func_group, which should be much more convenient. Thanks to Timothee Bessett and Robert Duffy for adding this functionality to the Radiant plugin interface. And... this has nothing to do with anything GenSurf does, but if you've used earlier versions of the plugin you'll notice a HUGE speed improvement in drawing the surface the first time in Q3Radiant.
  
• Bug fix: In previous version, Half-Life maps that used the decimate feature did not include hint brushes, even if hint brushes were specified on the Texture tab.
  

1.7     10/03/99

• Added support for hint brushes in Half-Life. This feature FINALLY makes GenSurf surfaces useful in Half-Life (previous versions... in a word... sucked). To make use of this feature you will need Sean 'Zoner' Cavanaugh's compiling tools. You can get them from the Half-Life Editing Resource Center. Thanks to Chris Shank for the heads up on these tools. The addition of hint brushes to GenSurf surfaces in Half-Life does all sorts of good things:
  Most importantly it prevents excessive brush fragmentation, and so knocks r_speeds WAY down.
  It eliminates (from limited tests I've run) "leaf portal saw into leaf" errors and the associate hall-of-mirrors effects you get in the game.
  It apparently fixes a few lighting errors, though I'm not sure why. This was a pleasant surprise/additional bonus.
  
  Many thanks to Sean for providing these tools. Woohoo!
  
• Added support (sort of) for Genesis3D. Users seem to like this feature, however I've never been able to get good results. Since the Genesis3D engine is quite a bit different than the standard q2 engine games and because there are a limited number of hours in the day (24 last time I checked), I won't be offering much support for this feature. If you have questions feel free to ask, but I may not be able to provide much help.
  

1.6     05/31/99

• Added support for Heretic 2. Thanks to trix/dhazel for his assistance. NOTE to Heretic 2 users: H2 uses surface flags to determine the sound of footsteps. There are default surface flags for gravel, wood, stone, and metal textures that are contained in the texture files. GenSurf will correctly retrieve those surface flags if either 1) you choose textures from a pak file, or 2) you generate map files in the /MAPS folder below the game directory. In the latter case GenSurf backs up one level from the /MAPS folder and looks for the texture in or below the /TEXTURES folder. If you don't have "use pak file" checked AND the map is written to a folder OTHER than gamedir/maps, GenSurf will not find the texture and retrieve the correct surface flags. This can easily be corrected in an editor. Also: To make use of GenSurf's detail hint brushes, you'll need to replace your qbsp3.exe with the included version. See qbsp3.txt for a list of changes.

1.5     05/12/99

• Added support for SiN. Please note: To make use of GenSurf's detail hint brushes, you'll need to replace your qbsp3.exe with the included version. See qbsp3.txt for a list of changes.
• Removed qbsp3 from the distribution. Since Geoffrey DeWan's qbsp3 1.07 supports detail hint brushes, there's no longer any need for my own qbsp3. Download Geoffrey DeWan's qbsp3 1.07 from http://users.net66.com/~gdewan/quake2.html
• Bullet-proofed some of the input values. For example, setting the horizontal vertical extents to the same values (0 width) with the Preview window open in previous versions would cause a crash. Thanks to gimp for prodding me to fix this.
• Added the ability to decimate the surface grid by throwing out vertices which do little to define the shape. For many surfaces, you can produce roughly the same shape surface with a high decimation value (75-85%). This will generally result in a map with lower polygon counts (and better in-game performance).
  I started out using the same QSLIM program used by mgs for performing decimation, but there were several problems with it - primarily that it used floating point values for all nodes. Although it was a trivial matter to round those values to integers, this sometimes resulted in illegal brushes. After searching the web for similar routines, I settled on doing it my damn self :-). The routine used by GenSurf is simple and fast-running, and though it isn't as sophisticated as other available methods, it produces pretty fair results (if I do say so myself).
  Because the decimation routine typically takes several seconds to run, the decimation value is not saved from one session to the next as other parameters are - instead it is always 0 initially. If this wasn't done and the decimation value was preserved from one run to the next, GenSurf might seem to be dead in the water when first started.
• Added ceiling orientation. Thanks to Pat for the suggestion.
• Added support for Kingpin. Huh? Kingpin hasn't been released yet! Yeah, I know. Call me anxious. Aside from there currently not being any rad programs that support Targa files, surfaces generated by GenSurf are ready to go. The only "maybe" that I'm not sure about is the size of the player's bounding box. Currently GenSurf assumes the bounding box is the same size as the Q2 marine.
• Player start is now correctly game-dependent. In previous version it was possible to generate a map with the player stuck in the surface for Half-Life.
• GenSurf now adds a ".map" extension to the output .map name if one isn't specified, and complains if the extension is anything other than ".map".
• "Use detail brushes" is now disabled and forced on if "detail hint brushes" is checked. When I first added the detail hint brush feature, I thought there might be an obscure case where you'd want detail hint brushes but not detail surfaces... but after mulling it over I can't think of a scenario where this would be beneficial. This change should help avoid a little confusion.
• Fixed a bug - in previous versions any text box that had an associated spin button displayed numbers with commas for the thousands separator, which ended up being interpreted incorrectly. Thanks to Robert Fegley for pointing out the error.

1.4.2 ß   04/01/99

• Just a couple of silly typos... Welcome to our new home, by the way :-)

1.4.1 ß   03/31/99

• Argghhh. Several bug fixes associated with getting texture names from a pak file in this morning's version. Yeah I'm a dunce.

1.4 ß   03/31/99

Bug/Problem fixes:

• Fixed a stupid mistake: Previous version set the Phong ID on the back face on north- and south-facing cliff walls, rather than the front face.
• Fixed a minor problem associated with fixed points and the random number generator. Because fixed points are skipped over when calculating values for the fractal method, simply selecting a point to fix would change the random number sequence and generate a new surface, even though no input had been changed. This version gets around this problem by generating a random number for every point, though the number isn't used if a point has been fixed.
• Preview window is now sized to fit your desktop, including the task bar... this is another of those "that ain't the way I work" problems - thanks to Mad Dog for pointing out that although I "Auto-hide" my task bar, others may have Windows set up "incorrectly" :-)
• This version is quite a bit more careful about the placement of the Info_player_start. In previous versions it was possible to generate a map with the player stuck in the surface. Thanks to Chris Brodie for pointing out the error.
• GenSurf now does a better job of interpolating values from bitmaps. In previous versions, vertices were mapped to the nearest pixel in the bitmap. This was fine for large bitmaps, but produced obvious roundoff errors in small bitmaps. The interpolation scheme now does a bilinear interpolation between the 4 pixels that bound a vertex. Thanks to Owen Coughlan for pointing out this problem.

New features:

• Added support for Half-Life, although, to be honest....ummm... it stinks. Since HL has neither the detail content property nor hint brushes, there's currently no way to use GenSurf's "detail hint brushes" to cut down on brush fragmentation, so the r_speeds of an HL GenSurf surface will be much higher than the same surface in Quake2. In addition, qbsp2 is prone to producing a lot of leaf portal errors - the bad news here is that unlike the Q2 warning, this one means business. In several test maps I've made that have leaf portal warnings there have been several see-through brushes in HL. Both of these problems may be solved with some modifications to the qbsp2 and/or qcsg source code - I'm working on it.
• Not a new feature - just a note: adding HL support caused me to reorganize how the settings files were written. If you've previously saved a settings file in GenSurf, the texture information will be incorrect when you open it in this version. Sorry for the inconvenience, but this won't be a problem again.
• Added support for scanning pak/wad files for textures (still no preview, though :-( ).
• Roughness and fixed points features now work with bitmap images. NOTE: There's a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem here. If you set several fixed points, then select a bitmap image, those fixed points will still be in effect - not a problem as long as you're aware of how things work. To release all fixed points and mimic the bitmap exactly, set Roughness (on the General tab) to 0, and click Free All on the Fixed Points tab.
• A range of vertices may be selected on the Fixed Points tab by pressing Shift+Click, and you can toggle a selection with Ctrl+Click. This is pretty handy for creating flat areas on your surface.
• Added "Ladder" checkbox on Texture tab. Play Spiderman in your map. Some of you purists may have strong objections to this... ummm.... don't use it if you don't like it. NOTE: This feature is not recommended for ground surfaces, unless you like running through molasses. Suggested by Ryan Hanthorn.

Your opinion, please:

One suggestion after the last version was to add a minimize button to the GenSurf window. Unfortunately you can't have both a minimize button and the context-sensitive help question mark button (I suppose you could if you're willing to write your own code to do so, but you guys don't pay me enough :-) ). To my thinking, this feature is more important than being able to minimize the GenSurf window. I'm not soliciting a vote, but your opinions one way or the other are welcome - but don't count on me agreeing with you :-)

1.3    03/20/99

• Now adds Phong shading ID for the surface plane only. Previous versions added this value for all planes - which was kinda stupid. Thanks to Mad Dog for straightening me out.
• Added a second texture input for faces other than the surface. (Owen Coughlan)
• Added a "rate of change" for fixed values. This is a pretty cool effect, I think. Another Mad Dog suggestion.
• Divided things up into tabbed dialogs, 'cause it was getting a bit too crowded. I can now add infinite input parameters, so keep the suggestions coming - that's a joke. :-)
• Fixed a stupid mistake with fractal surfaces with grid sizes that were not powers of 2.

1.2    03/18/99

• Bah! Bug fixes:
• •  
  • A previous ummm... "optimization" prevented the "roughness" value from working correctly in some circumstances.
  • "Free all" on the "Fix Points" dialog didn't... fixed points in the last row or last column remained fixed.
• Changed _sun_light value for skybox from 450 to 280 and _sun_ambient from 30 to 20... looks better to me. You're welcome to your wrong opinion :-)

1.1    03/17/99

• Detail brushes are now given skip faces at either end, and are also made the same length. This change won't affect the GenSurf-generated surface at all, but should lessen the probability of splitting other brushes that are added to the map. Thanks to compiler-guru Geoffrey DeWan for this suggestion.

1.0    03/16/99

• Changed "add hint brushes" to "detail hint brushes". After much hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing, I've given up on a general-purpose, one-size-fits-all hint brush solution to improving visibility in these maps. However, Alexander Malmberg's suggestion to use hint brushes with the detail property is a very good (in my opinion) way to eliminate all brush cuts in these surfaces, which will often provide better r_speeds than any "normal" hint brush solution. For this method to be effective, you will also need to check "Use detail brushes", which will use the detail content property on the generated surface. The only trouble with detail hint brushes is that qbsp3 automatically turns off the detail property for hint brushes. I've changed the source code to allow these brushes, though. This version of qbsp3 is now distributed with GenSurf. If you plan to use the "detail hint brushes" feature of GenSurf, replace your original copy of qbsp3 with the attached version. Please note that detail hint brushes are not a cure-all for brush splits. They work very well for terrain surfaces because 1) the terrain surface consists of brushes placed in a very orderly rectangular array, and 2) the hint brushes bound the surface brushes - there is no gap between the hint brushes and the surface brushes. For more information on what this feature does for you, and why it works so well, see the main GenSurf page.
• Added ability to read an 8-bit (256 color) bitmap, and interpret the color indices as values for each vertex. The aspect ratio of the bitmap is ignored - GenSurf maps the corners of the bitmap to the corners you've specified in GenSurf's input. You supply a value for color 0 and a value for color 255; all other values are linearly interpolated. Although this feature will work with any 256 color bitmap, it generally makes more sense to use gray scale images.
• Added "Save" and "Open" buttons to save/read GenSurf settings. This feature might be useful if you are using many "fixed points"... the fixity and value of these points are saved to the settings file, so you won't have to re-enter them every time you want to produce the same surface.
• Added a visual representation of an info_player_start's bounding box to the preview window. This should help give a sense of scale.
• Added a random number seed for the fractal form. This allows you to produce an infinite (well... ok, very big) variety of surfaces with the same input, while maintaining reproducible results.
• Fixed several nagging visual/interface problems, including 1) the "view angle" window was left open when the preview window was closed. 2) the "range affected" value for fixed points is not used for the fractal form, but this text box was enabled, which was misleading. 3) "Fix Points" didn't allow you to alter points along the border of your surface if "Linear Border" was selected, even if a waveform for which "Linear Border" isn't in effect was used.

0.5        03/11/99

• Added "Fractal" waveform. Thanks to Bakersman (kindred Rust visitor) for this suggestion. This option is very good at creating rough outdoor areas. Used in conjunction with "Fix Points" you can come up with a pretty nifty outdoor surface. The old "roughness" value is still used with the other waveforms.
• Another Bakersman suggestion: the orientation of the triangles used for the surface is alternated. The previous version (with triangles all having the same orientation) was prone to producing artificial ridges and valleys where you didn't necessarily intend. This version is, um..., half as likely to produce that sort of thing.
• Added ability to spin the preview around the 3 coordinate axes. This didn't turn out quite like I had hoped - the method used has the effect of spinning the surface while keeping the viewpoint fixed. A more intuitive (and easier to operate) method would be to fix the surface in place and move the viewpoint... maybe next time.
• Added "Browse" button for textures. Thanks to Owen Coughlan for shaming me into providing this feature :-)

0.4.1    03/10/99

• Minor changes to "Fix Points". Previous version allowed border points to be affected, even though "Linear borders" was checked. Also changed the rate of decay of the slope slightly.

0.4.0    03/10/99

• Added "Fix Points" feature that allows you to specify the amplitude for one or more selected vertices, along with a range from the selected vertex that other vertices are effected. This works better than I had hoped - suggestions are welcome.
• Added "add hint brushes" feature. This feature requires a bit of explanation: GenSurf currently doesn't strain itself figuring out good hint brush placement. It stacks 64 unit tall hint brushes with the same footprint as a grid square at each grid square location. IF your surface undulates so much that portions of the surface aren't visible from other parts of the surface, the use of this option will almost certainly result in improved in-game performance. However, that improvement SOMETIMES comes at a cost - increased vis time. I'm continuing to work on this. Hopefully I'll be able to come up with a scheme that improves r_speeds significantly without a substantial increase in vis time.
• Improved graphics - preview window is updated without the annoying screen-flashing.

0.3.0

• Added ArghRad 2 "value" field for Phong shading.
• Added texture scale and offset fields.